Mar. 7, 2013
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'The Marvelous Land of Oz' by L. Frank Baum, introduction by Mitchell Kapner

by Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

by Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

We're off to see the Wizard. Again. Yep, skipping down that yellow brick road.

Little could L. Frank Baum have known that when his Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 that more than a century later millions would still be making the pilgrimage to the Emerald City. In books. In movies. In merchandise.â??

Baum's classic about a little girl who went on a magical journey attempting to make her way home to Kansas was followed by a popular musical in 1902, which Baum adapted from his original. Its place in history was sealed in 1939 with the Judy Garland movie, The Wizard of Oz, ever since a staple in American pop culture. Throw in an additional 17 Oz novels from Baum, and you've got a legend.

And now Disney's movie, Oz The Great and Powerful, starring James Franco as a small-town magician who arrives in an enchanted land in a prequel to the original story, opens March 8. It has spawned a flurry of Oz books, from reissues of old standards from Baum's collection to a coffee-table book celebrating the art of the new movie.

- Disney Press is reissuing the classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with a new introduction by Franco. "The Wizard is a showman, and I suppose that is what I am as an actor," Franco writes. "So the Wizard's journey is actually very similar to my own, even though he traverses the strange world of Oz while I work in the stranger world of Hollywood." Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) is also being re-released by Disney Press.

- Disney Press also published several titles tied to the new movie, including Oz The Great and Powerful Movie Storybook;World of Reading: The Land of Oz and The Art of Oz The Great and Powerful written by the film's Executive Producer Grant Curtis.

- Artist/illustrator Michael Sieben re-imagines the Land of Oz in a contemporary style with a re-issue of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from Harper Design.

- Baum's stories are also refashioned in a new collection from 47North, Oz Re-imagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, which includes stories about a grown-up and bitter Dorothy, winged monkeys with wings too small to fly and a stuffed Toto. It's edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen.